the prelude
by halfhearted
Summary: jsrf. chapter 2 is up! catastrophe and the breakdown of social conventions!
1. the path to boredom is paved with gold

There was a chemical in their spray paint that inhibited aging, actually made them live forever -- The horizon was stone with neon filigree, a black park, a row of windows 

Rhyth sprayed memories out of a paintcan -- Bright films lay on the wall and a world looked through -- Somewhere in yourself there is a breath that breathes out without breathing in -- A magic wind... funnels moons and comets into a rainbow over breasts -- It begins to rain precious stones over the small of Rhyth's back -- A mind in the star generates the street where Gum slid into him, bumped into him, her breasts thrust outwards, the skin of her face taut, her lips full -- She smells, she has a peculiar smell -- This perfume emanates from the uninhaled exhalation where your heart really is 

"Where is the heart?" Corn asks.

He wants an argument...

Beat is silent -- It's not unusual to find a curiosity bordering on _de omnibus dubitandum_ in children too old to trust anyone and too young, again, to trust anyone -- Gum a chain of aromatic hydrocarbons -- Rainbows the refracted sunlight of spherical precipitation -- Fact is another word for nihilism

"All knowledge is _this close_," Beat holds up his thumb and forefinger as if he's about to pinch something, "to becoming nonsense. Find what stops this from happening and that's where the heart is."

Corn shrugs.

Uninhaled exhalation -- He runs his fingers over dreamwalls, feels them ripple, draws them back dripping -- Shapes in the water billow into other shapes -- Ariadne in the bed, in the forty-eighth band -- A grey string ravelled loose from Gum's dress and in it's stoniness it shone solitarily real among water-pictures and luminous faces -- He walks through ankle-deep water splashing across his feet in which glowing fish swim with golden coins, through an avalanche of woolen blankets pouring out of a closet -- It turns out that the thread was never from her dress -- He didn't see the veil -- Reaching her he pulls and pulls and watches the thread tear loose form the bottom, but the veil never seems to disappear -- Thread piles at his feet, his pulling has become frantic -- They began to drift back, through the endless floods and the surface of the moon

Cube is walking through a curtain of rain, her face slick and her hair shining, damp all over her black haltertop, her jeans speckled with dark drops -- A smell rises from the asphalt, rain streaks the bricks grey, the sky looks as if someone has scrubbed it with a steel brush, the windows are fogged

"This reminds me of the sewers. Always you had this sound. I'm only comfortable when it's raining."

Rain whispers -- Floorboards creak, the door opens

She doesn't like silence -- Wandering through the calliope spiral lights that grow from the street like thorns, the pink glare of a sky, the shadows of the Apostles -- Silence is the only thing you can market

"For you that's what silence is. And silence becomes noise."

"Silence is whatever is natural?"

"That can't be true..."

A panic settles on him like a cat, slow and languid and warm -- Which one of these streets leads to the arch under the rainbow -- Uninhaled exhalation where the calliope spiral lights blow out of him like a whirlwind -- The ice cream doesn't melt -- A chemical in the spray paint allowed them to live forever -- A chemical...  

"Where is this all going? What will we do? What's going to be there?" Beat asks.

Corn Rhyth Combo Jazz Cube none of them can answer -- Sit under awnings, silent eyes -- Beat turned around -- Everyone in autumn leaves, their expressions inscrutable  

We laugh depart from it and return -- Danced up the stairs and billboards -- When you gasped the reminiscence of a noise from some distance -- Another light slowly brightened on her shadow -- The plaza, Beat and Gum in the shadow of Benten-cho, a colour in the sky -- The cityscape -- The red light of legs pink -- Having tagged looked up at the moon -- It looks like only a moon is always denuded by how badly I want

"What's being young. And that is _be," says Gum._

Sparkling drips, down her eyelids -- Flutterheart honeytongue sugar skyblush -- Autumn sparkles up into the sky, clouds surround, starlings whirl into eyes 

Destroy the identical white shirts -- Graffiti is art -- People going to work their heads -- Dangling marionette -- Filth, teeth reeking with gold, skin slippery -- Father and morning paper -- Give all of the children televisions -- Storming heaven, footsteps in Red Square

HM and MB outside the circle -- No and Yes outside the circle -- Beat wants to know if the circle is Yes or No -- Corn Rhyth Combo Jazz Cube Pirahna Clutch Gum Soda Yo-yo -- Beat -- The music grew in it something familiar and the very form of it was the sense of seeing a way forward -- The minute the sky becomes electric

He can no longer speak. The Noise Tanks skate circles around him. He is no longer interesting.


	2. hey how about all three?

Eruption in Neo-Tokyo -- A bubbling pillar strains at the clouds -- Saucer- sized globs of paint rain down streets -- A river of synthetic rainbow colours flows through Shibuya Terminal -- Lemon streaks wash down walls mingling with sky blue drizzle -- Pedestrians caught knee-deep in the swirling colours struggle, clutching their briefcases, wiping paint from their brows -- Viscous red floods gush out of sewage drains threatening to sweep away the parked automobiles -- Birds do insane dances, madly flap their wings --  
  
A tide of purple and yellow paint washes the GG's down through Dogenzaka Hill like a great slide -- The Goddess statue gives up the ghost, sinking beneath a wave of chocolate -- They sail through the music store at the bottom of the hill -- The current tears posters from the walls, swallows display stands -- The GG's are funneled out onto the street, a heap of tables and chairs from a sidewalk cafe collect in an eddy at the side of a building --  
  
DJ Professor K comes through radio static and Corn struggles to make out his words above the beating of news choppers that fill the sky -- "Day-glo Neo-Tokyo! So much soul in the streets -- Noise Tanks short-circuiting at Chuo Street -- Emergency broadcast from the keisatsu and city council are frantic, but no casualties have been reported yet --"  
  
The GG's wallow in paint and streak sunblobs over themselves with coated fingertips -- Eyelashes crusted together in blue shells -- Lips dribbling bright yellow -- They begin sliding down walkways in Shibuya Terminal, flinging paint at the bystanders too modest to sink down into the colourpool -- Jazz and Beat lie flat in a puddle and form paint angels that disappear as soon as they are made -- A tug of war has broken out with Boogie, Rhyth, and Soda on one side and Corn, Gum and Clutch on the other -- Yo-yo and Cube link hands and act as the rope -- The whole party splashes down in a fit of laughter --  
  
Corn sees Rhyth getting up on her elbows and knees -- A dab of paint covers her nose and chin -- Her white thighs -- A gossamer of satin covers her ass -- He sees Gum's breasts crushed against the paint and tiny drops leaping up to lie on them -- He opens his mouth against Rhyth's lips, stetches his hands out to grab her waist --  
  
A sudden silence has blanketed Shibuya Terminal -- The GG's oblivious -- Gum falling on Jazz's back to nibble her earlobe -- Rhyth wraps her legs around Corn. . . .  
  
*  
  
We dropped our skates into the rubbish bin when the helicopters came -- We took off everything that might mark us as rudies -- The wristbands we used to listen to Jet Set Radio we threw into the sunset -- They had been ruined anyway with all the paint -- People were too tired to examine us very closely in those cramped rescue choppers -- We were too tired to care if they did -- All of us were dazed silent, staring up at the ceiling, our arms crossed, our heads tilted back and our mind's empty from sheer exhaustion --  
  
The sun was about to sink behind the horizon -- Looking over at Gum I saw a drop of sweat slowly inch its way down her bare chest -- It touched a spot of dark blue paint that had beaded on her skin -- In the droplet the paint dissolved into a little blue cloud -- 


End file.
